Flow Free: Bridges

The popular puzzle game returns with a fresh twist.

You'll be forgiven a little deja vu glancing at the screenshots in this review. Much of the gameplay of Flow Free: Bridges remains the same as it was in the original game that we reviewed towards the end of last month. Upon each of the game's many grids there are an assortment of colors. Each color has a starting node and a finishing node. Your challenge? To create a solid line between all of these matching nodes, with no lines overlapping, and making sure that every single square on the grid is covered.

While Flow Free: Bridges only adds one new and simple mechanic to the game, it does so in such a way that entirely new strategies are required. Each level now features a bridge through which one color line must pass vertically, and another horizontally. It's a simple twist to the gameplay, but one that ratchets up the difficulty of the game considerably.

Even on the smaller grids, the bridge forces you to think several steps ahead of your current action, although the original strategy of drawing nearby nodes directly together will get you some of the way. While you'll likely be terminally stumped at some point, for the most part you can tease out the solution piece by piece until you've covered every grid square, drawn together the nodes, and hit the sweet spot both under and over the bridge.

Like the first game, there's a huge number of levels to work your way through, from the basic 5 x 5 grids that are small but will still give your brain a decent run for its money, to the mind-boggling 9x9s that will have you screaming for mercy. If you hit a brick wall at any point, or you've somehow exhausted every challenge, you can enter a time trial mode and choose a length of time and grid size to work through for personal bragging rights.

The audio is still very minimal, save for the occasional drip-drip noise that now sounds whenever you draw a line under or over a bridge. We're still in love with the bright but simple visuals though, as well as the very satisfying way that you smear lines around the screen with your fingertip.

Flow Free: Bridges doesn't have quite the same impact as the original game, as this is only a very slight modification to the core gameplay. It is, however, a modification that will throw your previous intuition and mastery of Flow Free into temporary chaos. If you've savored and exhausted all of the content in the original game, then you'll already know that this is a dollar very well spent.